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WARNING: Extreme Caution is Required Before Buying Emergency Foods

By Denis Korn

Who Do You Trust!

I need to again alert all those reading this article to be alert, cautious and on your guard when buying so-called long term pouched emergency foods! Tell your family, friends and associates about this post. I have written extensively about the deception and misinformation being delivered by businesses that call themselves emergency and/or survival food companies. I have over 40 years in the natural foods, emergency preparedness and outdoor recreation industries – I know deceitfulness when I see it.

This post is the result of another me-too, mediocre, Utah based (they are in other states also) so-called emergency pouch food company contacting me today to sell their food. While I know there are legitimate honorable food companies in our industry, I am disgusted with those who are fooling customers into thinking they are purchasing foods of value. You have probably realized by now that I am very concerned and troubled by what is happening in our important niche market of emergency foods.

Why? – because some day families may have to depend on their emergency food supplies for prolonged subsistence – the last thing they need are surprises, problems and significant disappointment.

Here once again are the key problems these untrustworthy companies exhibit:

The food is of poor quality and would be difficult for the whole family to digest and rely upon for extended periods of time – a complete nutritional balance with adequate caloric value is questionable.

Serving sizes and the length of time complete assortments claim to provide food for is in most cases blatantly false and deceptive.

Many recipes include ingredients that are marginal, low-grade, filled with flavor enhancers, artificial items and of cheap quality.

Preparation can be deceptive – requiring larger quantities of water and long cooking times to reconstitute.

Web sites are the result of the marketing department and statements referring to the foods offered are often false, misleading, erroneous and filled with exaggeration – As I have said many times most of the emergency pouch food business are marketing companies, not food companies. I am always amused when I visit these sites and see all kinds of icons and phony awards they have fabricated.

Having celebrity endorsements and significant advertising budgets does not at all ensure the value of the foods offered – in fact in all the cases I have seen and heard – it ensures an inferior product.

Calling foods “freeze-dried” when there are no freeze-dried ingredients in any blends and cooking is required – just because freeze-dried foods have a better reputation – is dishonest and misleading – as is naming entrees with meat items in the title when there is no meat only soy and poor tasting flavoring.

25 year shelf life in inadequate quality “mylar”pouches – a marketing fabrication with no verifiable evidence!

I have included here a post I wrote recently titled 7 Things Every Reputable Food Reserve Company Needs to Tell You. It deals with these same issues and offers a complimentary perspective. At the end are links to other appropriate articles.

7 Things Every Reputable Food Reserve Company Needs to Tell You

I have written a number of articles dealing with trust, honesty, reflections, guidelines, questions to ask and recommendations concerning the purchasing of food reserve products. While the food you rely upon in an emergency is vital and life sustaining, unfortunately few preppers and planers do the valuable research they should for this essential category of provisions. This post is written to help educate and inform the serious preparedness planner.

Because I have personally witnessed, heard and read so many conflicting, misleading and outright deceptive claims and information regarding foods for long term storage, I am writing this – the first of two – concise and to-the-point articles. While many food reserve companies are educated and reliable, many are intentionally or unintentionally ignorant and deceitful.

You are highly encouraged to take this post seriously and require that the food reserve companies you buy from know what they are doing, and they need to answer these questions honestly and to the best of their ability. If they can’t – then buyer beware! In my opinion – there is something immoral, appalling and disgraceful about companies who take advantage of people who may not be adequately informed and are vulnerable to misleading promotion. Unfortunately many people are more motivated by fear and mindlessly react, rather than carefully evaluate the facts and make informed decisions.

Spending thousands of dollars on deceptive advertising, being all over the internet with Google ads, getting high profile talk show hosts and websites to hawk your foods, creating shelf life figures out of thin air, telling folks how nutritious the foods are when they are filled with questionable ingredients, packaging foods in pouches and in a manner that does not assure a long shelf life, and tricking people into thinking they are getting an adequate quantity of foods during an emergency by creating arbitrary “servings” – does not guarantee you are buying value, quality or an adequate supply of vital foods! The high cost of advertising, endorsements and commissions has to come from somewhere, and all too often it comes from the value of the food products themselves while compromising quality and quantity.

1. If the company promotes their food reserve assortments by number of servings, how many calories are contained in what they designate as a serving?

A common marketing tactic used by many food companies today is to promote a given number of servings in an assortment, and sometimes to even state that an assortment is good for a given period of time with a given number of servings. In the preparedness market place today, where people may have to depend on daily food rations for their nourishment, only knowing the number of servings in an assortment is close to meaningless and the information insignificant . Why? Because a “serving” quantity and quality can be anything the company wants it to be. You need more information.

2. What are the calories in each serving – the ingredient source of those calories (white sugar, non-nutritive calories or quality calories) – and what method, or source of information, was used to determine the calories in their products?

The standard for comparing one reserve food product with another has traditionally been to compare the number of calories of similar products or meals. This is done by comparing the calories by either: knowing the stated calories and the weight in a given serving of a product; or the number of calories of a food product in a comparable sized pouch or container. This enables comparisons of similar items from different companies – comparing apples with apples. Even the government on their mandated nutritional information requires the calories be listed – and the source of those calories.

3. How many calories does the company recommend one should consume per day, and how many of their servings will it take to achieve this number?

Now you can do the math and compare the real cost and value of one companies products to another. What is the cost per quality calorie? What is the cost for supplying the proper number of calories for the time period in your emergency scenario? Don’t forget it is the quality of the calories that is critical.

Here is the important issue: The RDA (recommended daily allowance) for the average adult person is 2,000 calories a day (reputable companies generally allow 1,800 to 2,200 calories a day in formulating their assortments). There are companies who promote a 500 to 1000 calorie per day allowance!

4. If a company uses names for their meals that sound like they contain real meat or are similar sounding to meat recipes – is it real meat, soy or gluten?

This is a common deception among many companies who either do not have the legal authority to pack real meat products because they do not have USDA inspected facilities, or they try to make their products as cheaply as possible.

5. When a company claims a shelf life of between 20 and 30 years, how was this determined?

I know of only three companies who have been in business longer than 20 years with long term food reserve products who can verify shelf life, use the proper packaging technologies and have their own testing facilities. In the over 40 years I have been in the preparedness industry, I have never heard of any established major manufacturer of dry food products ever recommending storing foods in any type of pouch over 7 – 10 years. This includes all the established companies packing pouch foods for the outdoor recreational industry.

6. What experience do your customers have eating your foods exclusively for extended periods of time?

If a company is selling you foods that you may have to rely upon for weeks, months or possibly years, how did they determine that their foods have the necessary nutritional value to sustain a person for an extended length of time? This includes children and adults.

7.How does the foods taste and are they formulated to digest properly if consumed for a lengthy period of time?

Many of today’s preparedness food companies are primarily marketing companies that don’t emphasize quality and nutrition. Their foods must be made cheaply to support the margins required for their extensive marketing budget, commissions and dealer costs. Study the ingredient declarations – often very difficult to find if not unavailable on many websites – for artificial flavor enhancers, preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, fillers and white sugar. Are there any reliable independent testimonials about the foods you are considering for a preparedness investment? How long has the company been in the food reserve business?

NOTE: MRE’S (meals-ready-to-eat – military rations) were formulated by the military to be eaten for no longer than one month.